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In my review for Library Journal, I wrote that the husband-and-wife team Bill and Karen Brodsky clearly understand what makes spy and special-ops fiction so gripping.
Thankfully, just ahead of the release of their first book, they were kind enough to go on the record for the TRBS 5 Questions segment, and they answered all kinds of stuff about their terrific debut, Beyond Honor, coming out from Atria/Emily Bestler Books on September 1, 2026.
Check out what they had to say below!
Bill: Karen and I didn’t decide to sit down and write a novel. For me, it started more like a political thriller version of the JRR Tolkien story, who said that one day he found himself writing down the sentence: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” and then he just started writing. In a similar way, I found myself looking at a painting by an artist named Bill Logan that’s been leaning against the wall of our living room for years. It’s a moody portrait of a bearded young man turned away from the viewer, looking over his shoulder at something unknown. He became the inspiration for Kevin. I just started telling myself his story. Military and political thrillers are what I love to read, and so it was natural that that this was the kind of story I started telling. When I was partway done writing it all down, I shared it with Karen and she jumped in to join me in creating what is now Beyond Honor.
Karen: I have always wanted to write a novel, and--I suspect, like so many people--have various versions in various notebooks in drawers all over our home. Honestly, I was kind of annoyed when Bill showed me his first draft of what became Beyond Honor. I mean, I’d been messing around for decades and he just sits down and starts a spy novel out of nowhere? But then I was invited to join the party and now Beyond Honor is very much our shared adventure.
Karen: Bill started out with the original storyline and characters. He doesn’t like when I say that, in case it sounds like I just jumped on his coattails, added a few adjectives and commas, and put my initial first on the cover. The truth is, that we both worked on all aspects of the book, but we have different strengths. Bill has been consuming books in the spy thriller genre his entire reading life, and is great at creating these intricate plots. He enjoys researching a lot of the political and military details in the book. And he has that annoying ability to just write until the basic plot is laid out. My strengths and passion lie more in crafting how the story gets told – through action, or dialogue, for example. And working out which shoulder our narrator should be sitting on for each chapter.
Maybe because we’re married, we don’t worry about tiptoeing around each other’s egos, so there was a lot of debate between us that I know helped make the story better in the end. We care deeply about our characters and pushed and pulled until their actions made sense to both of us. We also both love the action scenes, and the challenge of weaving the plotlines together. We vigorously debated any holes or pitfalls in the story that either of us found. By the end, it was collaborative on all levels.
On a practical level, we write on a shared google doc, tracking every single change. We quickly realized that we can’t sit and write a scene together at the same time. Rather, we’ll be on a walk and one of us will say, “I’m thinking it would be cool if Whitney...” Or, “I found a hole in the story, and here’s what I think we need to do…” Then one of us takes a stab at it,and the other approves it or makes their own edits. The rule is, nothing gets changed unless the other approves it. It’s helped the editing process, and I’m pretty sure it’s saved our marriage.
Bill: Kevin Rhoads had several influences. We have had many conversations with people with government and military backgrounds over the years. Additionally, we studied experiences of veterans and active military servicemembers through podcasts and written biographical accounts. It struck us both that their own accounts are often centered more on how their military experiences affected them personally than the heroic feats for which we all admire them. Kevin incorporates the attributes of a hero, but he is not a superhero, and he’s not unscathed by his experiences.
Karen: The voice of Cynthia King is largely based on Nancy Rice, a neighbor when I was a teenager in Vermont and who Bill later knew as well. Nancy cut her own hair in a messy crop with bangs hacked short across her forehead. She exclusively wore black turtlenecks covered in the fur of whichever dog she and her husband, Bob, owned at the time, and spoke with that gruff New England no-nonsense tone. For decades, Nancy chain-smoked Camel unfiltered cigarettes. One afternoon, years after she’d quit, she led me to a floor-to-ceiling cupboard in the kitchen. Every single shelf was stacked to the top with cases of Camels. “I buy a case a week. And when Robert dies, I’m going to start smoking again. And I’m not going to stop until I’m dead.” How King is that?!
Bill: We understand how brutal this industry can be, how many good books never find their way to readers because they never find the right hands to shepherd its journey. We were incredibly lucky. We’d finished the manuscript and did what most first-time authors do: passed it to a small circle of family and friends to get their reaction. One of my brothers gave it to a friend who, without reading it, forwarded it to a contact at CAA where it landed on the desk of Anthony Mattero.
Anthony offered to represent us, and throughout this process he has been a steady, guiding hand. He has answered more rookie questions than any agent should have to. Two months after he signed us, Emily Bestler at Emily Bestler Books/Atria at Simon & Schuster, offered us a two-book deal. We are incredibly grateful.
Karen: Everyone we have worked with on Anthony’s team and Emily’s team have been incredibly supportive and helpful. Not a day has gone by since that first Zoom call with Emily that one of us has not turned to the other and said some version of: “Can you believe this?”
Karen: We absolutely envision a series. We have submitted the second book in the Rhoads and Skyler series to Emily Bestler, and we’re deep into writing the third.
Bill: Each book is built around a general theme that guides the arcs of each main character. Not surprisingly, Beyond Honor is about honor and betrayal. We had many talks about how each major character in the book was pushed or driven “beyond honor” in some way. Book two explores the fallout from their choices. The characters—those who live to appear in the second book—are reckoning with the guilt, regret, and growth that stem from actions that drove them beyond honor in the first book. Book three…ah, we’re getting ahead of ourselves!
We hope to keep building this world and trying to balance a fun, exciting read with characters and settings that people will love as much as we do, for as long as readers want to stay in it with us.
Jeff Ayers is the author of several books, including Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion for Simon and Schuster/Pocket Books. He has interviewed hundreds of authors for magazines, newspapers, and podcasts and has been a book reviewer for The Associated Press and Booklist. He currently reviews suspense thrillers and mysteries for Library Journal, Criminal Element, and firstCLUE. Jeff co-writes the National Park thriller series for Minotaur under the name A.J. Landau and co-writes the Jigsaw Puzzle Mysteries for Crooked Lane. He is a retired public librarian and former co-executive director for ThrillerFest. He lives near Seattle, Washington.
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